THEN the loud pop-pop-pop of a gun is heard, some people in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (Barrm) dive for their mobile phones.

Soft tick-tick-ticks form on a glowing screen. And when the typist hits send, the words reach the Critical Events Monitoring System, or CEMS, a SMS-based reporting system that captures conflict incidents and tensions in communities that may or may not lead to the eruption of violence.

Shooting incidents in BARMM stood out as the most common of reports transmitted to the CEMS as they tallied 424 cases for 2020 (or one case a day) even as figures have yet to include December.